


The Case of the Time-Travelling Rebels

by Vilakins



Category: Blake's 7, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 07:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6745528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vilakins/pseuds/Vilakins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vila Restal goes into a bar and meets... Sally Donovan!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Case of the Time-Travelling Rebels

This looked like a good pub, Vila Restal thought. And why wouldn't it be, in this past pre-Federation London: no dome, green fields all around as they'd seen from orbit, even trees growing right here in the city. If he was going to find out where Blake had gone, a pub was a good start, no matter what Avon thought. It wasn't just that people were generally more relaxed and talkative, but Blake was a real ale man and he might well have been here.

Vila seated himself at the bar beside an attractive young woman. "Some of your Old Penny Farthing, please," he said to the bartender. "By the way, has a bloke with curly hair and huge puffy olive-green sleeves been in here?"

"Nah, mate. I think I'd notice the sleeves, anyway."

"All right, fair enough." Vila sipped his ale appreciatively and nodded to the woman beside him. "Nice drop, this."

"It is."

"Hello there." Vila rested an elbow on the bar and gave her a friendly grin. "I'm Vila Restal."

"Sally Donovan. I hope you find your friend."

"Me too," Vila said feelingly. "Look, you got any idea where someone—"

"Vila!" Avon said over his bracelet. "You left your tracer behind. And you need a recorder so we can find out as much as possible about this time. Teleporting you back... now."

"No, Avon, wai—"

But it was too late.

 

Sally blinked, stunned. One second he'd been there and the next gone. She passed her hand through the space he'd been occupying. "All riiiight," she said under her breath. "No one is ever going to believe this." And what did that voice on his weird wrist mobile mean about 'this time'? She knocked her drink back and ordered another.

She jumped when suddenly Vila materialised again, picking up his glass as if nothing had happened. "Where did you go?" she demanded.

"Me?" Vila said with wide-eyed innocence. "Been here all the time."

"No. You have not. You were gone and now you're back." Sally reached out to poke his arm, which was disconcertingly solid in its brown suede. " _Palpably_."

"Oi! That's what you do to fruit, not people."

"I want an explanation."

"You must've blinked."

"Pull the other one. I heard what that Avon said to you. You're from another time." Sally shook her head. "Not that I want to believe it, but it's the only reasonable explanation for you just disappearing like that."

"I didn't disappear. I just went somewhere else."

"Instantaneously."

Vila nodded, resigned. "Yep, teleport."

"You teleported." Sally closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Where to?"

"Our spaceship in orbit."

Sally downed her second drink and signalled to the barman. "Make it a whisky this time." She turned back to Vila. "All right. I want to know just what's going on. Including why you have to find your friend with the big sleeves."

"Well," Vila hesitated. "Okay. Maybe you can help."

"Why not." _Even if I'm off duty today_. "I've had a lot of experience investigating missing persons. I'm a detective inspector."

"Oh, are you?" Vila looked taken aback. "Well, all right, I won't hold that against you." He gestured for another glass of ale. "You see, we're from a couple of thousand years in the future—"

"Oh, yeah?" Sally said sceptically. "And English hasn't changed at all in that time?"

"Probably. Wouldn't know." Vila shrugged. "I mean, everyone speaks it wherever I go. Language implants."

If Sally could accept teleportation and an orbiting spaceship, she could accept that. "All right, go on."

"See, there was a bit of a stuff-up with the environment and all the cities had to be domed, and the Federation took over. Nasty lot, which is why we're rebelling against them. And Blake—he's our leader—got the idea of going back in time to stop it happening. Bloody Orac," Vila muttered resentfully, "for actually _doing_ it."

"And you want to stop Blake, why?"

"Because I mightn't exist anymore! Plus Avon says that maybe the alternative is worse, and better the devilish government you know. So we have to find Blake before he does anything too extreme. I mean, at least all us humans _survived_."

Sally finished her drink and paid both tabs. "Right." She stood up. "Come on. You need to meet the freak."

 

"John, is time travel a thing?" Sherlock asked.

"Of course not!"

"Good. Because it would complicate cases extraordinarily. And I would consider it extremely relevant knowledge, unlike the solar system."

"No, really, he's from the future," Sally said. "He disappeared to his spaceship and came back. I grant you it's bloody hard to believe, but _that's what happened_."

"John. Spaceships?"

"Just rockets to and from the international space station. I think you can safely disregard those for any case that's likely to come up."

"Good, good. Don't want to clutter up the mind palace." Sherlock sat back, steepling his fingers. "I understand now, Sally. You want me to work out how he performed the trick."

"No!"

"It wasn't a trick," Vila said at the same time. "Look, I can prove it." He lifted his bracelet to his mouth. "Avon, you there?"

"Oh, absolutely."

Vila looked briefly disconcerted by Avon's enthusiastic answer. "We'll have to prove who we are to get these people to help us—"

"Yes, I rather gathered that."

"So, could you teleport me back?"

"Oh, I think I can do much better than that. Give Mr Sherlock Holmes your spare bracelet. I have no intention of passing up the chance to meet him."

John sat stunned in his chair when Vila and Sherlock disappeared.

"See?" Sally said. " _Not_ a trick."

"He'd better be back, and soon." John's forehead wrinkled with worry as he got up and went over and waved his arms around where Sherlock had been.

"Yeah, I did that too. And I wouldn't stand there," said Sally. "What if he came back while you were there? Wouldn't there be an explosion or something?"

John quickly stepped aside. "There's air already there. No sudden vacuum when they went, or anything." But he was a prudent distance away when the glowing outlines of Sherlock, Vila, and a third person appeared, followed by them in person.

"Interesting," said Sherlock. "Teleportation _is_ a thing. It will complicate things enormously. You really ought to have told me, John," he added reproachfully.

"But it isn't. Not in _this_ time."

"Precisely," said the third arrival, recognisable as Avon by his voice. "It will not affect any of your cases except this one. The technology belongs to the future, and so far, in fact, only to very few."

Sherlock sat down in his armchair. "Then let's begin."

"Just wait a minute!" Sally said indignantly. "How about showing me and John your spaceship?"

"I hardly think it's relevant to the case," said Sherlock. "A large room with chairs, sofa, workstations, and a display of the Earth. Which by the way I _did_ know was spherical. Time zones."

Sally leaped to her feet. "I don't care! And I don't care if no one will believe me afterwards; I bloody want to see it!"

"It could in fact just _be_ a large furnished room with a screen showing the Earth," Sherlock said thoughtfully.

"Nope." John shook his head, pursing his lips. "No no no. Given they have teleport, why would they fake the rest? Accept the one highly advanced technology, you have to accept the lot."

"Fallacious reasoning."

Avon sighed. "Give them both bracelets and ask Cally to teleport them up, Vila." He sat down beside Sherlock. "You've heard our problem. Can you help?"

"I need more information. To start with, why _this_ time and _this_ place?"

"Blake consulted Orac—Orac is our computer—and it decided that this was the optimum for both."

"England? Although it is America that has such a disproportionately large effect on the world's politics?"

"Yes. Here and now. Give or take a decade or so."

Sherlock lost interest. "Boring."

"Ohmygod, ohmygod, Oh! Em! Gee!" Sally appeared with John and Vila, waving her phone. "I have photos. I know no one will believe them, but I don't care. I have _photos_!"

"How does that teleport _work_?" asked John. "Does the air I displace get sent to the _Liberator_?"

"Yeah, that's right," said Vila. "Or anything where we're going. So no teleporting to poisonous planets or into walls, that sort of thing. It'd be a bit uncomfortable, being embedded in a wall."

"Boring, boring, boring," said Sherlock.

"Um, what?" John said. "You've solved it? You know where their Blake is?"

"With my brother, of course."

"Indeed," said Mycroft, entering with a curly-haired man in inconceivably large sleeves. "Glad to see you managed to work it out."

"See what you mean," Sally said to Vila. "Your weird matching suede outfit looks almost normal in comparison."

"Oh, thanks."

"How did you know we were here?" Avon asked.

"Oh, far too easy. Where else would Blake's companions go but to my more famous but less intelligent brother?"

Avon narrowed his eyes. "You haven't changed anything, have you?"

"We're still here," Vila said cautiously. "So far."

Mycroft smiled. "I saw no reason to alter any plans and projects I have in motion."

"But now that you know the future, that must affect decisions you haven't yet made."

"The future?" Mycroft looked superior. "No one knows any such thing. I should require rigorous proof before I could possibly believe anything as bizarre as time travel. I shall leave this slightly interesting but delusional chap with you, brother. Goodbye."

Sherlock smiled and clapped his hands with glee as the door closed behind Mycroft. "I _do_ have proof, but I'm not going to tell my _so_ -clever brother."

"It was a pleasure to meet you," Avon said to Sherlock.

Sally cleared her throat. "Actually, despite what that arrogant bastard Mycroft said, you wouldn't have if Vila hadn't run into _me_."

"Really? I think not. I set Orac the task of finding a location in which Vila would stay long enough to meet someone who would convey him to Sherlock Homes."

Sally rolled her eyes at Vila. "Two of them in the same room's probably breaking some law of physics."

"Yeah. Just as well the snarkier brother left. I don't think the space-time continuum would've held together much longer."

Avon ignored them and raised an eyebrow at Blake. "Well?"

"Yes, I failed." Blake pinched the bridge of his nose. "Never mind. It was worth a shot."

"Maybe you didn't have any choice," Vila said. "You couldn't change what you did or didn't do two thousand years ago because you'd already done it. Or not. If you see what I—"

"Mean. Yes, we do, Vila, thank you for that." Blake sighed. "Cally, ready to teleport us back?" All three shimmered and disappeared.

Sally looked at John. "You going to blog this?"

"No way."

"Yeah, me neither."


End file.
